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November 6, 2017

JPSS-1 Launch Delayed

JPSS-1 spacecraft rendering. Image Credit: Ball Aerospace

November 6, 2017 – The ULA Delta II rocket carrying the JPSS-1 mission for NASA and NOAA is delayed due to a faulty battery. The delay allows the team time to replace the battery on the Delta II booster. The vehicle and spacecraft remain stable. Launch of the JPSS-1 mission is scheduled for no earlier than Tuesday, November 14, 2017. Read More

Powering Saturn’s Active Ocean Moon

A recent study has provided new insights into how the warm interior of Saturn’s geologically active moon Enceladus could be sustained for billions of years. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

November 6, 2017 – Heat from friction could power hydrothermal activity on Saturn’s moon Enceladus for billions of years if the moon has a highly porous core, according to a new modeling study by European and U.S. researchers working on NASA’s Cassini mission. Read More

November 6, 2017 – Jupiter’s intense northern and southern lights, or auroras, behave independently of each other according to a new study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray and ESA’s XMM-Newton observatories. Read More

Scientists Find Potential ‘Missing Link’ In Chemistry That Led To Life On Earth

November 6, 2017 – Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a compound that may have been a crucial factor in the origins of life on Earth. Origins-of-life researchers have hypothesized that a chemical reaction called phosphorylation may have been crucial for the assembly of three key ingredients in early life forms: short strands of nucleotides to store genetic information, short chains of amino acids (peptides) to do the main work of cells, and lipids to form encapsulating structures such as cell walls. Yet, no one has ever found a phosphorylating agent that was plausibly present on early Earth and could have produced these three classes of molecules side-by-side under the same realistic conditions. Read More

Artist’s concept of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flying by 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019. Early observations hint at the Kuiper Belt object being either a binary orbiting pair or a contact (stuck together) pair of nearly like-sized bodies with diameters near 20 and 18 kilometers (12 and 11 miles). Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Carlos Hernandez

November 6, 2017 – NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is looking for your ideas on what to informally name its next flyby destination, a billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) past Pluto. Read More

More News:

Using a sophisticated computer model, scientists have demonstrated for the first time that a new research approach to geoengineering could potentially be used to limit Earth’s warming to a specific target while reducing some of the risks and concerns identified in past studies, including uneven cooling of the globe.

Raytheon Company received Aviation Week magazine’s 2017 Program Excellence award in the Special Projects category for its Immersive Design Center, which features the CAVE virtual environment. Raytheon’s CAVE allows cross-functional teams of design and manufacturing experts to immerse themselves in virtual reality environments. Teams can collaborate on risk and cost reduction solutions for design challenges using 3-D versions of structures and parts that can be manipulated in real time.

NASA commercial cargo provider Orbital ATK is scheduled to launch its eighth mission to the International Space Station at 7:37 a.m. EST Saturday, Nov. 11 NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Live launch coverage will begin at 7 a.m. on NASA Television and the agency’s website. NASA TV also will air two prelaunch briefings Friday, Nov. 10. At 11 a.m. mission managers will provide an overview and status of launch operations, and at 3 p.m. scientists and researchers will discuss some of the investigations and technology demonstrations to be delivered to the station.

Ozone pollution near Earth’s surface is one of the main ingredients of summertime smog. It is also not directly measurable from space due to the abundance of ozone higher in the atmosphere, which obscures measurements of surface ozone. New NASA-funded research has devised a way to use satellite measurements of the precursor gases that contribute to ozone formation to differentiate among three different sets of conditions that lead to its production. These observations may also assist air quality managers in assessing the most effective approaches to emission reduction programs that will improve air quality.

The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) and Boeing have again joined forces to promote the use of the International Space Station (ISS) as an orbiting laboratory capable of producing cutting-edge research across numerous scientific disciplines. The two organizations on Nov. 2 granted a total of $500,000 to three microgravity research companies through startup accelerator MassChallenge.

The CU Boulder space minor is offering an amazing opportunity for students to hear about research happening here at the university in bioastronuatics and human spaceflight. On Nov. 7, Allie Anderson will give a special talk about what it takes for humans to live in space. There will be free pizza, and the talk will be followed by a free showing of black-hole footage! The event is open to CU Boulder students interested in the space minor, open to all majors.

Two big planetary talks will reward space fans this November at the Louisville Center for the Arts. On Wednesday, Nov. 8th, we will be graced by the likes of Leonard David, famed space journalist, who will enlighten us with his talk on Mars. The next frontier in space exploration is Mars, and human habitation of Mars isn’t much farther off. In his presentation about the National Geographic book Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet, author Leonard David will show the book’s gorgeous photography and images from outer space and the planet itself, plus give clear scientific explanations of how we’ll live on Mars.

A Chinese Long March 3B rocket lifted off from the country’s Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 11:45 UTC on Sunday, embarking on a multi-hour climb into an orbit over 21,000 Kilometers in altitude to dispatch a pair of Beidou-3 navigation satellites to join China’s global navigation satellite system currently undergoing deployment.

His mom’s maiden name was Moon. That probably wouldn’t have mattered if Buzz Aldrin had become a landscaper or a used car salesman. But he became an astronaut, a history-making man of space, whose course may have been charted long before he was born. And even now, 48 years after becoming the second person to set foot on the moon, Aldrin is blazing new trails.

The journey took just over 9 years. The spacecraft used Jupiter as a slingshot for extra push. It took all sorts of measurements and sent back amazing images. Now, having investigated the surface of Pluto and some of its moons, New Horizons is leaving the solar system and is on its way to an object further out in the Kuiper belt which is just 30km across. In addition to its jaw-dropping achievements, the craft has fuel for another 20 years, and promises more amazing revelations from beyond our solar system. The mission’s Principle Scientific Investigator Alan Stern is with Jonathan Webb and says the mission is the furthest exploration in the history of our species.

Paragon is proud to announce it received the prestigious Governor’s Celebration of Innovation Small Business Award from the Arizona Technical Council and Arizona Commerce Authority. This award honors the visionaries of Arizona’s technology ecosystem whose passion and dedication energize Arizona’s rapidly growing technology. In September, Paragon also won the Copper Cactus Nextrio Innovation award for another innovative technology regarding water recovery for spacecraft.

An international team of astronomers led by NASA scientists successfully completed the first global exercise using a real asteroid to test global response capabilities. Planning for the so-called “TC4 Observation Campaign” started in April, under the sponsorship of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to double the launch frequency of satellites built by it by scaling up outsourcing to industry to meet growing demand, officials say. Mylswamy Annadurai, the director of ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC), the prime agency for realising satellites for the Indian space programme, said ISRO now launches nine to 10 spacecraft built by it per year.

Neptune’s moon system is not what we would expect for a gas giant in our solar system. Scientists have now explored the possibility that Neptune started its life with an ordinary system of moons that was later destroyed by the capture of its current giant moon, Triton.

During his campaign, candidate Donald Trump said little about space science and exploration other than that he thought it was “terrific,” hastening to add, “We have to fix our potholes, too.” As president he has been slightly more outspoken, telling Congress in February, “American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream,” and pushing for NASA to accelerate its plans for sending astronauts beyond low Earth orbit.

An international team of researchers have found an infrequent variation in the brightness of a forming star. This 18-month recurring twinkle is not only an unexpected phenomenon for scientists, but its repeated behavior suggests the presence of a hidden planet.

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) on Monday announced it had entered into an agreement with FIMI, the largest Private Equity fund in Israel, whereby FIMI will invest $40 million in ImageSat International (ISI)—which provides high resolution satellite earth imagery to facilitate viable data analysis and actionable insights, in exchange for 53.6% of ISI’s share equity.

Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser is preparing for a second go at its all-important Approach and Landing Test when it will be dropped into free-flight from a helicopter and fly itself to a landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The latest test window opened on Sunday, after being held from an October date due to the test vehicle’s helicopter ride being sent to fight deadly wildfires in California.

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in enterprise computing, storage, and networking solutions and green computing technology, today announced that the company has partnered with the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) to expand advanced computing and data analytics used to study the Earth, solar system and universe. Based on the combination of density, system performance and optimized cost, the Supermicro FatTwin-based solution brings an additional 1.56 PetaFlops to NASA researchers. The Rack Scale solution is factory integrated at Supermicro’s Silicon Valley headquarters to deliver optimal reliability and efficiency.

Astronomers using the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT), which is operated jointly by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, report today in Nature Astronomy that they have detected the second most distant dusty, star-forming galaxy ever found in the universe – born in the first one billion years after the Big Bang.

Last month, NASA invited members of the public to send their names to Mars. And the public responded loud and clear. More than 1.6 million people signed up to have their names etched on a microchip that will be carried on NASA’s upcoming InSight mission, which launches in May of 2018. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, reopened the opportunity after it proved successful in 2015. During that open call, nearly 827,000 names were collected for a microchip that now sits on top of the robotic InSight lander.